"It'll Do" Joins the Fleet

We were on holiday in Adelaide for Christmas, plus competing in the
Australian Heron championships at Henley
Sailing Club in January. Dad and I were sailing together and my sister
was crewing for someone else from Whyalla (probably Roy
Ward or Ross Stacey). As I recall the Whyalla boats were typically placing around
30th in a fleet of
about 100 Herons.

Dad decided to purchase a somewhat run down
Holdfast Trainer for my brother Kym to sail.

The
Holdfast Trainer, which was designed in 1948, is a great boat for 8–15 year olds. They
are sailed mainly in South Australia and are a modified
Sabot with the addition of a deck, bowsprit and a jib. These
additions improved the boats performance and make them
suitable for a crew of two young children to learn to sail.

Holdfast
Trainer base
statistics:

Length

2.42 m

Beam

1.15 m

Minimum Weight

23 kg

Sail Area

??

Our Holdfast Trainer had been professionally built with
one design racing in mind and had a very good set of sails.

On returning home to Whyalla, dad and I
began to quickly get the boat in shape. The phrase
"It'll Do" was used quite a bit during the process
and when it came time to name the boat, that was the name
that stuck.

And so Kym proceed to learn to sail in
"It'll Do" on Sunday morning with his mate Simon
Finch in the Whyalla Yacht Club's junior class. And in the afternoon
they'd go racing. One time, whilst racing in the
Heron class, dad and
I noticed Kym going the wrong way during a race. He was chatting
away to Simon, totally oblivious as to what was happening.
And he still won the race that day!